


You Will Prevail

by chimesDissent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Comfort, Domestic, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-02
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimesDissent/pseuds/chimesDissent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is quiet between these walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Will Prevail

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday fic for [Luma](http://lumanous.tumblr.com/). Happy birthday, darling! Thanks for being such a sweetheart, and for giving me a wonderful prompt.

You’re still not used to the lack of sound; the way the house just sits. Occupied, but no longer living; rooms echoing nothing between their walls aside from your own quiet breaths and footsteps.

Childhood is a memory bathed in sound: of musical notes and clattering pans and calm words laced with warm hugs. But this, this has far stretched passed the days of your youth, and it’s unbearably noticeable.

There are creaks at times, the walls and floorboards just settling in as Rose puts it, but it always makes you perk up. 

_Could it be,_ you think, _are you home again?_

At first you would creep downstairs, hopeful in your search, but you would only find disappointment in its wake.

Empty rooms and bare walls that you’d break your own feet kicking out in frustration if you had the money to take yourself to the hospital afterwards.

The only thing you can do is glare up at the mantel above the fireplace. Two framed photos instead of one, two vases filled to the brim with ashes and bone.

You glare until your eyes burn and the only thing left to do is drag yourself back upstairs and sleep another day away.

\--

It wasn’t something the two of you had taken into consideration—too morose, not worth the pain or the awkward silences the talk would bring.

The cremation was the easy part. Call the shop, have them pick up the body, choose a vase, wait a few days, and bam: dead father on display for anyone interested. 

He didn’t feel heavy in your hands at all; the man who raised you, carried you on his shoulders, tucked you in to sleep. The whole of him boiled down to just a few pounds of ash and bone fragments. Nothing symbolic to the life you knew.

It was everything else that brought difficulty. The documents, the signatures, the filing. The scraps of paper that needed to be faxed and mailed to every business invested in your dad’s continued living.

There are car loans to be paid, house mortgages, hospital bills. You pick up mail with his name written all over it and you wonder if it’s going to be another thing you have to find money for.

You can’t handle a college tuition on this and you can’t get a good enough job without a degree.

You have to make a choice, and it has to be soon.

\--

There’s a troll standing in front of your doorway and your hands are still wet from cleaning dishes.

His knock had nearly startled you--forceful, impatient, unexpected. You barely had time to grab the drying rag before rushing to the living room.

“You’re John, right?”

His voice carries the hint of an accent, but you’ve held enough conversations with trolls to not be confused by it.

“That’s me, dude,” you say, pushing the door further open, “how can I help you?”

He pulls out his phone and holds it up for you; one of your postings is on the screen. “Still taking offers on that roommate deal?”

You look at him and you wonder if this is a guy you can trust. There are creeps out there, your dad had said, weirdos and people filled with greed. But you need someone to help you out, to ease the burden of acting as an adult because you weren’t prepared for any of this.

You’d rather give him a chance than drown in the life you’ve been dropped into.

“Sure am, are you interested?”

“Do you think I’d be standing here if I wasn’t?” He gives you this look, one that makes you feel a bit like a fool for asking. “Am I at least going to get a tour or something before I have to commit, or are you just going to take my money and leave me to fend for myself?”

You stretch up a bit to snap your fingers in front of his face, hoping it will make him stop talking long enough for you to invite him in.

“You snap those fingers at me one more time and I’ll break them right off your hand.”

“Dude, chill out and get inside before I change my mind and shut the door in your face instead.”

\--

It takes four more visits before Karkat finally signs the contract you had written up.

You’re sharing lunch, a small test to see how you handle working alongside each other, and you actually think that Karkat might not be such a bad addition if it means you won’t have to live on boiled noodles and microwaved popcorn again.

Karkat’s legs stick out from under the table, too long for a piece of furniture clearly designed for humans. He isn’t the biggest troll you’ve ever met by any means, but that doesn’t change the fact that he easily stands a good head above you. Broad shoulders and a stern face only complete the image of a troll not worth bothering. 

“I’m going to be a good roommate and ask if you’re free to help me move all of my shit into my new room. I can work with any day you’re available, I just can’t lug my entire recuperacoon up a flight of stairs without an extra set of hands to keep it from slipping and knocking me unconscious.”

Karkat talks in this weird way of making everything seem like an absolute chore. He’s haggard and reluctant, but always more than ready to put you in place if he’s displeased.

“Alright, how about Thursday? That’s always a good day for new beginnings.”

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense,” he says, stabbing another forkful of green beans, “but, thanks, I guess.”

\--

You are learning that habits are just as hard to fall out of, as they are to fall into.

Karkat takes up too much space and he makes things aggravatingly noisy. The hours he spends outside of his recuperacoon are loud and bothersome. He doesn’t type on his keyboard, he pounds his fists against the keys, like he’s hoping that the more force his puts into typing will better express how truly pissed off he is.

When drafting out essays of rants aren’t possible, he yells and spits into his cellphone and refuses to let anyone out-speak him.

Continual bouts of romcom marathons fill up the spaces when Karkat isn’t pissed off. The volume amplified and blasting cheesy lines and swelling overtures of melodies about love and all that dumb junk.

He throws dishes and food around like he’s taking them on in a fight. A headbutt to the jaw is really a bowl being tossed into the dishwasher; a kick to the groin is meat being tenderized.

You try to block it out, to make your own set of noise to counterbalance such a discordant symphony, but nothing works.

No amount of music or youtube clips of great films or voice calls with friends can drown out Karkat.

Dave says you should just talk to him about it, tell him to settle his ass right back down, but you’d much rather take a sledgehammer to the walls and see if the resulting collapse would be enough to bring about a round of silence again.

\--

The snap came when you were trying to use a journal Jade had mailed you; this dumb, silly thing where you’re supposed to ask questions and write out letters to your dad. 

You know you’re not going to get an answer back, you’ll never get an answer, but Jade said it helped her after Grandpa Harley died and you trust her enough to give it a shot.

Karkat is two doors down the hall and attempting to make some programming code work, if the sound of his frustrated screaming gives you any hint. 

And you’ve tried to not get upset because this house isn’t just yours now. Karkat pays his fair share of bills and helps cook and clean and generally you aren’t bothered by him at all, but fuck you can’t stand how loud he has to be.

Dad knew when to burrow himself into his study and give the house some downtime, why can’t Karkat?

You can’t do anything with this journal right now so you toss it off your bed in hopes of getting some frustration out. But the soft _plop_ against the carpet does nothing to help your attitude and you can’t stop yourself from getting up and heading straight for Karkat’s room.

He’s got headphones tucked into his ears and a Skype window up on his screen when you open the door and look in. 

“Karkat, we need to talk.”

He can’t hear you though; too involved in his own world to know you’re even calling out.

“Fuck, Karkat, I’m not going to put up with this any longer.”

You break that unspoken agreement of not invading each other’s sanctuaries and march straight into his room, waving your hand between his face and the computer screen to finally get his attention.

He glares at you, tugging his headphones from his ears, and opens his mouth to scold you but you won’t let him beat you this time.

“No, don’t even start, dude.”

You straighten up, towering over him for a change, and you’re enjoying it.

“Do you have any idea how annoying you are? Do you? Like, I can’t even fucking think over here, man!”

You know he wants to stand up, because trolls are not designed to be submissive, but he doesn’t move. He merely looks at you like he’s trying to figure something out, but the only thing you want him to notice is how pissed off you are.

“Care to explain to me exactly what I did wrong, or are you just going to continue flipping your shit in my room.”

“Here’s a plan, I’ll do both and then we’ll see how we end up. You don’t take any consideration into how fucking loud you’re being. You bang around here like you goddamn own the place and I’m sick of it!

“I can’t concentrate, I can’t think. I can’t fucking piece myself back together because all I hear is you living out your life and I can’t take it any longer!!”

You stop there because you’re slipping up a bit, taking yourself off track, and you’re gasping for breath. You didn’t want to talk about that, didn’t want to acknowledge it out loud. Not with Karkat, or anyone, not ever.

He stares at you, holding your gaze long enough to make your face burn and you’re getting worked up again, so you decide to end it there.

Why drag it out any longer when you’ve already said what you needed to?

“Sorry, this place felt enough like a tomb as it was. I’ll keep a watch on my fucking volume level.”

You slam the door before he has anything else to add.

\--

The house has fallen quiet again.

There are days when you can’t even tell if Karkat is living with you or not. Aside from the light flicking on and off in his bedroom and the occasional passing in the hallway, he’s like a ghost.

You don’t need any more ghosts in your life.

It’s putting you on edge; making you almost nervous.

The fact that trolls are designed for stealth and survival had escaped you for so long that the world seems unbalanced when Karkat can move around the entire house without a tap or a creak.

You didn’t need to confess to anyone what you said or did to feel like an absolute shit. Still throwing tantrums in your twenties shouldn’t be an acceptable way of living, and you wish you had a way to jump back in time and knock yourself out before making such a stupid decision.

Just wishing to fix things isn’t actually going to accomplish anything, though. What you need is action, but you don’t know how to go about it. You haven’t known Karkat for long enough to understand how to approach him, to ask for forgiveness and make things right again.

You wish Dad was here. He’d understand.

He’d know what to say and how tightly to pull you into a hug. He wouldn’t look down on you for losing your temper, but he would know how to help you grow from your mistakes.

You don’t want to grow up without him. You don’t want to struggle and fall without him there to catch you, to drag you back up when all you want to do is lay down and forget about the world for a while.

But he isn’t here anymore. Not in the real sense.

He’s broken down and stored in ceramic and he has no way of comforting you now.

The only thing you can do is sit on your couch and stare at his picture: his calm eyes and soft smile, the gentle tip of his hat.

You’re beginning to understand why he would sit here himself and stare at Nanna’s photo for hours on end.

Maybe trying to find some answers to questions, maybe searching for a bit of peace.

You jump when a weight joins you on the couch. Karkat’s silence unnerves you more than his loudness ever could.

“It’s like a hole, isn’t it? Only no one can see that it’s there besides you.” He’s not looking at you, he’s staring at your dad’s picture and something clicks into place. “It was like that when my custodian finally croaked.”

“I’m sorry about that, dude.” Because you are, actually, you are sorry and you wish no one ever had to go through what you’re going through now.

Karkat shakes his head, finally meeting your eyes. “I kept his skull even though I was supposed to let the body become food for scavengers like the proper troll custom, but I couldn’t imagine not looking at his shittastic face every once in a while.”

You want to be grossed out, but you can’t help but laugh instead. “I guess that makes sense. Sort of like how I kept the ashes and all that?”

There’s a sense of relief that fills you here because you understand what Karkat had been meaning to do. It wasn’t his desire to aggravate you, but merely an attempt to help you work through your grief. To show you, no, to let you hear that the living will keep moving and breathing and surviving, even when the world feels off-balance.

But the world doesn’t feel off-balance anymore, it feels right. You’re grateful to Karkat for that. 

“A bit like that, yeah.”

Karkat reaches out for you now, slowly like he’s almost afraid you’re going to bolt away, but you have no desire to leave. His hand touches the back of your head, sharp claws just barely adding pressure against your skin.

He takes acceptance from the way you lean forward and he pulls you close, wrapping arms around your back and tucking your head completely underneath his chin.

You push as close as you can, hiding in the protection that he’s offering you because you know it’s not going to last forever, but goddamn you will enjoy it while you have it now.

His heart beats at a different pace than yours, but it’s strong and it’s there and it’s the only thing you want to focus on right now.

You feel him press his lips against the top of your head and you respond by wrapping your arms just as tightly around his sides.

\--

Karkat pushes you down on the bench before he sits next to you. He’s been practicing, he tells you, and you don’t doubt him for a second.

You’ve heard this piano ring throughout the house for months now. The same set of songs played over and over until perfection has been reached. 

Karkat has this awful habit of restarting a song as soon as he messes up, and there are days when you hear “Unchained Melody” stop and start continually until he finally gives up after hours of practice.

But you smile as he sets his fingers against the keys, playing out a song he must have work on in secret because you don’t recognize it right away.

You watch as his fingers press each note—controlled, confident. It’s comfortable in the way it doesn’t feel forced or rushed. 

You know that things will never go back to the way they were; the closest you’ll get to your dad now is when you trace the shell of his vase with your fingers as you fondly regard his memory. And you know that, even now, the skull of Karkat’s lusus rests contentedly between the two vases.

These are things you’ve learned to accept—wholeheartedly, peacefully.

Because you know that Karkat didn’t bring back all of the sounds you were aching for, but he’s brought more than enough.

He’s brought the sounds of rants being typed, the rushed notes of his weird language, the scripted dialogues of love confessions (and during those moments when he needs to say it too, the unscripted words of affection coming from his own mouth, and coming from yours).

It’s nothing close to what you thought you needed, but it’s become everything you cherish.

Your house has awoken, and so have you.

**Author's Note:**

> [happy birthday.](http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/mother-piano-bonus)
> 
> [self-indulgent nsfw companion fic already in the making because i lack self control when it comes to johnkat.]


End file.
